Music as a saviour

Here's a fine read from Glenn W. Smith on a concert by Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell and Vince Gill:

"... If Emily Dickinson could sing she would have become Emmylou Harris. If Marty Robbins had survived “El Paso” he would have become Rodney Crowell. Vince Gill is the Huck Finn of guitar. He plays from the territories ..."

and

"... This great river of American soulfulness, from Anne Hutchinson to Henry Thoreau to Sojourner Truth to Margaret Fuller to Fats Waller to Bob Dylan to William Carlos Williams to William Faulkner to Janis Joplin…why are our politicians so blind and deaf to the gifts these artists bring to us? Why do they want to reduce life some a kind of shadow life, a life in which everything but their own power or pursuit of power is without meaning?"